Sportswriters and historians are constantly on a quest to rediscover a hero or event, forgotten by time, whose story could be immortalized in a book or on film. And once or twice in a decade, one of these stories captures the imagination of the public and becomes a runaway best seller—like Laura Hildebrand’s “Unbroken,” Daniel Brown’s “Boys in the Boat” or Julie Checkoway’s “Three-year Swim Club.” Add “The Watermen” by Michael Loynd to this illustrious list.
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By profession, Michael Loynd is neither a sportswriter nor a university-trained historian. He also wasn’t looking to write a book when he took his wife and four kids to Europe for a family vacation in 2013. But it was that vacation that would indirectly—and serendipitously—lead him to the story of The Watermen.
What Michael Loynd is, however, is a lawyer, philanthropist, community board activist and big dreamer who tells an incredibly well-researched story in a wonderfully entertaining and enlightening manner that will keep you turning the pages and wanting more.
It was while passing through some small Swiss towns in the Alps that had only hosted an Olympic event—not necessarily the entire Games—that Mike Loynd noticed they all proudly displayed the Olympic rings. And he wondered why his hometown of St. Louis—which had hosted the first American Olympics—didn’t do the same.
When Loynd returned home, he teamed up with the St. Louis Sports Commission to lobby the International Olympic Committee for the rights to the rings and establish an Olympic Legacy program. And five years later, thanks largely to Mike Loynd, the rings returned to St. Louis in 2018—114 years after the city had hosted the third Olympiad in 1904.
AMERICA’S FIRST OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST IN SWIMMING
It was while researching his Olympic City Legacy Project that Loynd stumbled across the name of Charles M. Daniels for the first time. He was “stunned” that he had never heard of him before, for Daniels had not only won America’s first individual Olympic gold medals in swimming in St. Louis in 1904, but his record of winning eight Olympic medals overall (5 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze in 1904-06-08) had stood for more than six decades—until Mark Spitz took his total to 11 medals overall (9 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze in 1968-72).
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Daniels also was inducted into the inaugural class of honorees at the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965. But what Loynd found even more amazing was that there had never been a biography written about Charlie Daniels and the role he played in the early history of Olympic and American competitive swimming.
For most of the 19th century, swimming had been “synonymous with indecency, the uncouth and the poorest and dirtiest of society,” writes Loynd. But by the time Daniels was born in 1885, swimming had become synonymous with the privileged elite—those who could afford to learn how to swim in unpolluted private natatoriums or attain membership in exclusive athletic clubs or pay for vacations at the seaside resorts of Newport, Long Branch and Cape May.
It was into this world of financial and social privilege that Charles Daniels was born on March 24, 1885. His illustrious grandfather and namesake had been a congressman and served as a New York Supreme Court Justice for 28 years. His mother was a descendant of Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and her father was the owner of Buffalo, New York’s most successful dry goods store.
Daniels’ parents, Tom Daniels and Alice Meldrum, grew up in mansions a short distance from each other on Buffalo’s Millionaire Row. When they married in 1884, it was the city’s most anticipated social event of the year. Among the “Who’s Who” of guests were Judge Charles Folger, a distant cousin of Benjamin Franklin and Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; William Waldorf Astor, one of America’s richest men; and the governor of New York and next President of the United States, Grover Cleveland.
ENORMOUS PERSONAL CHALLENGES
But while Charlie Daniels might have been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, that didn’t mean he was free from having to overcome enormous personal challenges while growing up.
His father, Tom, turned out to be a self-absorbed, narcissistic womanizer who squandered not only his own inheritance, but most of his wife’s, on luxuries and failed business schemes.
One day, Tom took the family to the beach, where he spent the time showing off his athletic and aquatic talents. When Charlie expressed interest in learning to swim, his dad took him to a natatorium. Without any instruction, Tom pushed his son into the deep water…with the mandate to “swim!” Not surprisingly, Charlie sank and nearly drowned. After that failure, Tom wasted no opportunity to shame or embarrass the boy in public. Before Tom could do any more damage to his son, Alice kicked Tom out of their rented apartment in New York City.
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Divorce is commonplace today, but in 1900, it was socially unacceptable—and even scandalous, especially for women. For their own survival, Alice and Charlie had to maintain the public facade of an intact family as long as they could. But Tom was living openly with another woman and was later caught in an investment swindle that made him as notorious as Bernie Madoff, the American fraudster who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Alice had no choice but to take the nuclear option to protect what was left of her dignity and inheritance.
As a single mom, Alice struggled to free Charlie from the crippling anxiety, depression and sense of worthlessness that was overwhelming his life. She took him to private swim lessons, where a competent instructor helped him overcome the trauma of his near-drowning experience.
Charlie was also small for his age and physically weak. America’s newest hero, Teddy Roosevelt, had overcome anxiety and physical weakness in his youth by “strenuous activity in the great outdoors.” So Alice took Charlie to a lodge in upstate New York, where he received his first introduction to the skills of a woodsman: camping, canoeing, hunting, hiking and shooting.
A NEW FATHER FIGURE
Returning to the city, Charlie found a new father figure in Dr. Phillip Seixas, the athletic director of his high school. “Doc” Seixas was a graduate of Columbia, a medial doctor and an all-around athlete who counted Teddy Roosevelt as a friend and admirer.
Like he did for all the boys at the school, “Doc” tried to find a sport that Charlie could enjoy and excel. He tried running and high-jumping, baseball, the new sport of basketball and gymnastics—all to no avail. “Doc” also ran a summer camp that fostered scouting and woodsmanship. While Charlie truly loved the outdoors and became an expert woodsman, what he wanted to do most was prove to himself he could become as good a swimmer as his father—and, someday, perhaps win his father’s respect.
One of the rituals at the camp was to start each day with a swim, and “Doc” helped a determined Charlie develop a respectable stroke. If Charlie was to have any chance to become a real “swimmer,” “Doc” knew the boy would have to get better coaching at one of the elite athletic clubs. But as the son of Tom Daniels, he also knew that Charlie would never be socially accepted as a regular member at any of the important clubs. There was, however, a back door—as an athletic member—if he could just overcome his anxieties and pass a tryout.
PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT
To help him gain a psychological insight into Daniels and coaches who helped mold him, both psychologically and physically, into the greatest swimmer the world had ever known, Loynd interviewed mental health experts about anxiety and researched the era’s knowledge of and approaches to mental health. He also interviewed Olympic gold-medal swimmers, including Debbie Meyer, Mark Spitz, John Naber, Rowdy Gaines and Matt Biondi about the emotional roller coaster athletes go through when competing on the world’s biggest stage.
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The Watermen is not just a book for swimming enthusiasts like myself—it is for anyone who enjoys a good underdog story…and the underdogs include Daniels, American swimming and the Olympics themselves. But it is also the entertaining story of an era, when America rose to become an international economic powerhouse and when swimming had an incredible, albeit under-appreciated, impact on American culture—from the way people dressed in public to women’s rights and to a modern concept of how people spend their leisure time.
And Loynd is a master at using his extensive background research and knowledge to bring Daniels and the era in which he lived back to life—as only someone totally committed and passionate about his subject can do. For his efforts, I give Mike Loynd a gold medal for literature, and I think you will, too. The Watermen is available through Amazon and other book retailers on June 7.
Bruce Wigo, historian and consultant at the International Swimming Hall of Fame, served as president/CEO of IHOF from 2005-17.
This book sounds like a great read for anyone who enjoys competitive swimming & seeing how a great swimmer had to dig deep inside to prove his worth to the sport of competitive swimming!
Read the book, five stars, a real page – turner – I think this story would make a great movie! ?
I agree with you Bill, this book ought to be made into a movie…
I was given this book as a Christmas gift and put it aside for a while. Once I started reading it I could not put it down, it is such a great book! I’ve been swimming at the Hall of Fame since 1990 and had no idea about the rich history of swimming. Everything from the restrictions of Victorian times to the development of the crawl and all of the social problems at that time, made it an amazing read, full of history and an impressive amount of painstaking research and fact. I highly recommend this book to anyone, swimmer or not, it’s truly a wonderful underdog story!
I agree this ought to be made into a movie, it would be a true winner!
Swimming is probably the one thing that has shaped my life more than anything else! I college it got through Engineering school., in my professional life, it has given me the strength to keep going. especially when political office issues seep into things. I think this is a great time to visit Amazon for an actual BOOK ! to buy instead of all the other crap I order from them!